Dagmar Herzog (#1: What was, what is, and what can be done?)

(CUNY)

“The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.” (Theodor Adorno, “Education after Auschwitz” (1966))

We are living through multiple assaults: on basic existential security (livelihoods, freedom of speech, the reliability of the rule of law); on knowledge (what universities are about is discovery, preservation, and transmission of knowledge – and all three are under comprehensive attack: through defunding, erasure of whole universes of data and analyses, and outright forbidding of the teaching of the world’s complexity); and on empathy itself. This constitutes a total inversion of Judeo-Christian ethics (which are all about mercy, and responsibility for the stranger and the poor). But it’s also a violation of the secular fundamentals of equal human rights. In sum: We have been living through a deliberate disorientation of morality. It is really an attempt to reshape human nature, not so much to instil a specific set of ideas as rather to indoctrinate into a feeling of in-group superiority vis-a-vis vulnerable others. There has been, already for some time now, an aggressive push to re-hierarchize human value, to make a frontal assault on the core democratic ideals of the dignity and equal worth of every human being, and to do so by first of all going after the already-stigmatized.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the current emotional climate is that there is no agreement on reality. Millions of fellow citizens have been marinating in – quite deliberately manufactured, daily sophisticatedly reiterated and elaborated – falsehoods and distortions for years already. This shapes their subjectivities. Thus – even when they are perfectly able to recognize the distinctive combination of ruthlessness and farcicalness with which assaults are underway on values that most human beings would claim to hold dear – they evince strong attachments to the ways they personally have come to make sense of the world and thus tamp down cognitive dissonance with a broad array of rationalizing strategies. This is one of the greatest challenges facing us all now.

So, historians: Why study the past? To argue about the appropriateness (or not) of analogies with the 1930s so as to somehow wake people up – as though they had not already been thoroughly emotionally prepared not to care? I would say that this is not the most important task. I would say: We turn to the past – yes to the 1930s-1940s in Germany, but also for example to Chile, Brazil, Argentina in the 1960s-1970s – to remember that there are many, many different ways that we now need to learn to be brave. This means also remembering that anti-fascism or non-fascism requires both protest and protection of the vulnerable. Max Weber (in “Politics as a Vocation,” 1919) contrasted Gesinnungsethik (an ethics of conviction) with Verantwortungsethik (an ethics of responsibility). But I would urge us to understand the latter as a supplement to the former, not its opposite. We now, looking back on the Third Reich, honor people who protested and those who protected Jews or political opponents – whether by creating fake passports,and alternative sources of income, hiding people away, or helping escapes – and with regard to the persecution and mass killing of people with disabilities we now honor those who changed diagnoses, sent vulnerable people back to their families so they would not be murdered, or – again – hid them away until the danger was over. These are dark times. Yet close to half of the citizens of this country – including substantial members of its elite – do not acknowledge that as yet.

Nobody knows instantly how to behave when fascism comes. It takes time, imagination, dedication, and resolve to figure out where to give money, where to give shelter, where to give courage, where to give care. But: There are lots of ways to be honorable. History can be an indispensable resource for us in this way.

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